Much like the idea of becoming a real vampire, there are some things I really like about Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines 2 and some things I really don’t care about. Developer The Chinese Room has undeniably done a remarkable job of breaking out of the typically snail-paced and linear realm to give us a lantern-drenched open world of Seattle that’s fun to explore, with the addition of some excellent writing and voice acting. However, the combat never rises above the level of being just pretty good, and the lack of payoff in both mechanical and story choices holds this nocturnal journey back from greatness.
The slice of Seattle that serves as the center of exploration, persecution and politicking in Bloodlines 2 is impressive, although don’t expect the scale of GTA here. In the roughly five-by-five blocks, where most of the buildings are climbable and the rooftops are fully navigable, there’s a lot more space to roam than there was in Bloodlines 1’s Santa Monica, with several distinct and memorable areas, from quaint Pioneer Square to lantern-lit Chinatown. Navigating it by screaming, jumping and gliding was some of the most fun I’ve ever had.
Here, too, your semi-customizable elder, Phyre, will hunt his prey in the form of hapless humans who can be provoked, frightened or seduced, depending on your hunting style. I understand that feeding is a major, inevitable part of the evening routine, but I think it could have been done better in a few ways. First, you just need to eat to recharge your fighting power. In the tabletop game, you feel thirsty every night when you wake up, and in Bloodlines 1, your blood supply is constantly decreasing. I don’t think it needs to be a hardcore survival game, but something like this would support drive home the point that vampires need blood just like we need food and water, adding a sense of desperation because right now it’s just something that needs to be stocked up before going into battle.
Second, there simply isn’t enough variety in the NPC models and voices to keep me hooked for the 30-plus hours it took me to play through the first playthrough. I probably fed on one particular woman who wore the exact same hat at least a few dozen times.
You have an obligation to keep the Masquerade at street level, which means you don’t apply your powers or feed yourself before the norms, which is appropriate. You can’t have Vampire: The Masquerade without, well, Masquerade. But I found it was too basic to dismiss any suspicion if I screwed up.
A key element of Vampire: The Masquerade’s story that is almost completely missing (apart from one cutscene that happens no matter what you do) is the Beast, a shadowy and voracious voice inside every vampire that drives them to do terrible things and can cause an uncontrollable state called Rage. The absolute best mechanic in the 5th edition tabletop game Vampire: The Masquerade, on which Bloodines 2 is based, is the growing hunger track, which increases the likelihood that your character will behave in monstrous or unpredictable ways the longer they go without food. I understand that people usually don’t like to lose control of their character. However, it is so indispensable to the vampire fantasy that its absence is almost a fatal flaw. This is the only choice that really consistently made me feel like I was playing some typical vampire game and not Vampire: Masquerade game.
At least the combat is challenging, pulsating, and overall pretty decent. It can be a little disorienting, and I really wish there was more “hard” targeting, considering everything takes place in first person and both you and your opponents are constantly jumping at high speeds. However, there are some exhilarating nuances to master, such as various kicks, parries, and telekinetic holds. At least for the melee version, this could be really exhilarating once I get the hang of it.
Stealth is also rewarding and rewarding, although in some segments, such as boss fights, it’s narrow in a way that can feel like a punishment for choosing to focus on it. Some of the more esoteric fighting styles, such as Tremere Blood Sorcery, are just fucking nasty and amazing after the first few tries – boiling someone’s blood from the inside is as bombastically brutal as you can imagine – but after a while they can feel more like a gimmick than a play style. Overall, the crazy and action-packed sequences that combined my skills using the environment, my movement powers, and even my enemies against each other were some of the best points of Bloodlines 2.
Unfortunately, it falls most flat as an RPG. You play as an older vampire, so it’s not your typical zero-to-hero story. But to give you a representative example, the damage dealt by your melee attacks at the very beginning is exactly the same as in the final boss fight. You awaken up-to-date powers called Disciplines, like the ability to turn imperceptible or kiss an enemy to bring them to your side, but you’ll earn them all for your chosen clan within the first eight hours or so, after which everything else will be mostly peripheral. You can upgrade your health path by finding hidden symbols painted in blood throughout Seattle, but overall, there’s not much of a sense of power progression for most of the campaign.
This is further narrow by the fact that you can only equip four disciplines at a time, and only one from each category – so, for example, you can’t mix and match the movement abilities of two different clans to create your own hypermobile playstyle. I don’t see the point in these restrictions at all. I also don’t like the fact that each Discipline can only be used once in a battle before needing to be fed again, as they each have their own separate pool of power points, rather than drawing them from a common pool of stored blood that I can spend as I please. Sometimes limits are good. I just don’t think any of them are. I’m a goddamn vampire. Just let me do what I want.
I really appreciate Phyre’s options for visual customization. Each clan has four different outfits to unlock, from the punk rock streetwear of the Brujah to the elegant business attire of the Ventrue. NPCs will react to you differently depending on what you’re wearing, for example it’ll be easier to seduce you if you show a little more skin. It’s really amazing. However, we lack space for weapons, which is definitely not something amazing. I understand that Phyre itself is an older and living weapon. He can telekinetically apply weapons as a disposable combat item or throw a fire extinguisher across a room. But hand-to-hand combat is always hand-to-hand combat. Again, this just limits my style from a character customization standpoint. Do I need a gun to kill these morons? NO. But a vampire in a trench coat and with two guns or a cute katana is just too frosty and iconic to keep out of your vampire RPG game. This is part of character creation and self-expression in a board game. What are we doing here?
The story of solving a series of dramatic murders and navigating court politics is overall extremely well written and voiced by a fantastic cast, from the sarcastic Nosferatu Tolly to the self-indulgent Queen of Seattle, Lou Graham. In fact, it’s so good that in the last few hours I’ve been ready to throw open the window and scream into the night that everyone needs to experience this.
But then it completely broke my icy, dead heart. I’ll do my best to avoid spoilers here, but you can skip straight to the verdict if you’re really sensitive to this sort of thing.
Basically every intriguing decision I made throughout the entire chronicle was unceremoniously chewed up and spat out onto the pavement, then crushed under an indifferent bottle of anticlimax. All the machinations I’ve set in motion, the allies I’ve made, the chess pieces I’ve manipulated, all amazing senior vampire shit I was buzzing in the wonderfully inspired lead-up to the finale… they were resolved in a 30-second epilogue voiceover that completely denied me the real gameplay I’d been dreaming of this whole time. I was devastated. This may be worse than the original ending of Mass Effect 3. It’s like the last chapter of the book was ripped out and burned.
Then there’s the fact that maybe about a third of the story takes place through the eyes of Fabien’s Malkavian noir detective, who somehow found his way into Phyre’s head. And I love Fabien. Really. At one point he made me cry. His portions are equally skillfully written and provide an intriguing perspective on Seattle’s history. But his mind-altering Malkavian powers, such as making someone recognize you as another person or reading their superficial thoughts? Cool idea, but any time you can apply them it’s to add variety to the story. There is never a moment when they can be combined or used in a clever way that makes me want to do so AND solved the case, which is another huge wasted opportunity.
Ultimately, this is a story that almost feels exasperated by the fact that it has to offer any choice at all.
